Monday, January 19, 2009

OK everyone: Raise your hands if you understood why this had anything to do with Jurrasic Park. Anyone? I know I didn't. Luckily the Internet came to my aid: You see, the man is saying that he will give the child diabetes (fun fact: diabetes does not work this way!) and then, should the child turn evil, the man will deny his child insulin such that the child will die. This is similar to the plan that the Scienticians had in Jurassic Park to keep the dinosaurs under control. You may not have noticed that element of the story if you, like me, spent all of Jurassic Park going "holy crap, those dinosaurs are SO COOL"

Anyway, I did not understand it. So I was just confused. I was just like, "Yeah, we get it, you love Jurassic park." Guys do you know how many times he has referred to it? Guess. According to the robots at Oh No Robot, it is at least four! That'sawholecrapload. Not to mention the continual raptor stuff we get to put up with that grew out of it. Anyway I guess I'm just wondering how much more he is going to reference that specific book and movie.

Would that plan even work? As long as the child is dependent on you for insulin, won't they also be dependent on you for, you know, food and a home and stuff? Dinosaurs don't need that because they're freaking dinosaurs but it is my understanding that a human child would need that.

For some reason I would have expected this comic to generate more wrath from me, and yet now that I am sitting here writing, I have little more to say. So- what do you people think of this comic

In general, I don't care what stick figures do in their flat world for as long as it keeps me amused.In particular, after it turns evil I would even recommend they should chop it up, roast it and feast on it. I don't care. They're stick figures.

I actually got a smile out of this. It's slightly absurd, which I like, and I loved the movie. The references are getting a but old, but I got the joke and it was at least slightly funny. Not great by any means, but not as terrible as some.

Is diabetes even a reasonable parallel to the events of Jurassic Park? I've only seen the movie, but I thought the scientists' control was in only breeding females of the species. There wasn't anything like "we poison-gas them on Tuesdays and administer the antidote on Mondays." The all-female dinosaur squad could still have wreaked havoc.

That's just annoying on a geeky level, though. On a parental level, I agree with the cow that stick figures can be as horrible as they like - this does dent the "we're just playful nerds" theme, though. On a medical level, Randall needs to study more of that impure science known as BIOLOGY before trying to tie it to Jurassic Park.

I would say that this comic was the worst one I've seen in a long time. It hinged on a relatively obscure part of Jurassic Park, considering how old the movie is. Not to mention the "without me the kid will die" part was executed so poorly by using diabetes as the trigger.

Being type 1 diabetic I was grossly offended by this and I'm not actually that easily offended at all. Its sheer ignorance about diabetes and what causes it put the final nail in the coffin. Xkcd is for people who like to *think* they are nerdy/smart/whatever as opposed to people who actually are somewhat more aware of what issues we are ignorant of.

thomas, you had to pay real close attention to get the reference from the movie, it was actually explained a lot better in the book (not surprising, most of Michael Crichton's books don't translate well to film) and that was that the "female only" lab breeding was so that there would be no outside breeding from the dinosaurs, so only the techies and the labbies could make new dinosaurs. BUT there was also the fact that they had dangerous and unpredictable animals on the island and they needed a fail safe if a dinosaur ever escaped the island and they couldn't track it in time.

This fail safe was taking a gene out of all the dinosaurs' DNA to properly break down an enzyme in their bodies through the use of lysine (I think, I may have to double check this to be sure, been a few years) so the dinos would die if they didn't have lysine in their systems because they would be poisoned, so lysine was put in their food. Now I said this was mentioned in the movie, but it was very VERY brief, it is mentioned for all of 10 seconds and you had to pay close attention to catch it and understand it at the same time.

It pretty much came about that when Hammond, Malcolm, Murdoch (not his name, but the Aussie hunter guy), Arnolds and Ellie are discussing a contingency plan if the dinos escape (this is also while they are trying to find a way to get the computer system all figured after Nedry's hacking) and Murdoch briefly mentions "the Lysine, we could put that into effect" and Arnolds explains how it works and how if the dinos don't get their supplement, "they will fall into a coma and die" and Hammond expresses his anger over this before Arnolds' explanation because he doesn't want the dinos killed if they can help it (of course they change him so he is more likable at the end after seeing his error whereas in the book he's still a crotchety old dreamer who thinks everyone else is wrong and ends up being destroyed by what he created, in the form of being eaten by compys)

Sorry if I ruined some Jurassic Park stuff for people, but I'm a hardcore Michael Crichton fan, so I know WAY too much about some of this stuff, also if you see posts by "Aces High" they're from me as well

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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